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Ennoblement is the conferring of nobility—the induction of an
individual into the noble class. Depending on time and region,
various laws have governed who could
be ennobled and how. Typically, nobility was conferred on
individuals who had assisted the sovereign. In some
countries (e.g., France under
the Ancien Regime), this degenerated into
the buying of patents of
nobility, whereby rich commoners (e.g., merchants) could
purchase a title of nobility.

Contents

The Idea of Ennobling
Qualities

Medieval theorists of nobility relied on earlier classical
concepts (Platonic, Aristotelian and Christian-Hellenistic) of what
personal traits and virtues constitute grounds for ennoblement. In
Plato's Republic, he provides for promotion
and degradation of citizens according to a strict spiritual
meritocracy. In the words of Will Durant, "If the ruler's son is a dolt
he falls at the first shearing; if the boot-black's son is a man of
ability the way is clear for him to become a guardian of the state"
(Durant, The Story of Philosophy, 1961, p. 28). In
medieval times, heraldic writers cited biblical examples to
demonstrate that nobility is not just a matter of descent but of
personal virtue: Shem, Ham and
Japheth sprang from the same father, yet Ham was ignoble and King
David rose from shepherd to become king through sheer faith and
soldierly courage. Bartolus
defined natural nobility by reference to Aristotle, who in his Politics
explains how some are marked out for freedom by their virtues (and
specifically by their capacity to rule), and are so distinguished
from the mass of men whose talents fit them only for a servile
role. Those free men whose virtues thus fit them to rule Bartolus
defines as the natural nobility. With regard to natural nobility,
Bartolus applauded Dante Alighieri's argument in his
Convivio that
nobility does not derive from ancient riches adorned with fine
manners, but is the meed of individual virtue. Bartolus argues that
the prince should strive to make his dominion a true mirror of
God's own by advancing only those who are naturally noble (see Maurice Keen,
Chivalry, p. 149). Geoffroi de Charny, the noted
celebrant of knighthood, argued "God will mark out those
who labor valorously, even though they come of little estate"
(Livre de chevalrie, in Oeuvres de Froissart, ed. K. de
Lettenhove I, pt. iii, 494, 495). During the Renaissance, the
Platonic-Christian humanist belief in virtue as the essence of
nobility was summed up in the Latin phrase: Virtus vera
nobilitas est (Virtue is the True Nobility). The counter-revolutionary author Edmund Burke wrote on
merit-based promotion: "...the road to eminence and power, from
obscure condition, ought not to be made too easy, nor a thing too
much of course. If rare merit be the rarest of all rare things, it
ought to pass through some sort of probation. The temple of honor
ought to be seated on an eminence. If it be opened through virtue,
let it be remembered, too, that virtue is never tried but by some
difficulty and some struggle." Napoleon
Bonaparte and Friedrich Nietzsche were later to
continue the tradition of promoting a vision of aristocratic meritocracy, although
no longer within (and opposed to) the Catholic-chivalric
framework.

Kingdom of
Poland

In the Kingdom of Poland and later in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, ennoblement
(nobilitacja) meant an individual's joining the szlachta (Polish
nobility). At first it was granted by monarch, since late XVI century by the
sejm that gave the ennobled person
a coat of arms.
Often that person could join an existing noble szlachta family with
their own coat
of arms. The increase of number of Polish nobility by
trustworthy ennoblements is proportionaly minimal
(since XIV century).

Imperial
Russia

After the reforms of Tsar Peter the Great in the early 18th
century, noblemen in Russia were obliged to serve as civil or
military officials. Personal nobility was automatically conferred
on all civil and military officials starting with the corresponding
rank of Captain.
Hereditary nobility was conferred on all officials with the rank of
Colonel (Any given military
post had an equivalent civil one, rank-wise). The system was later
extended to merchants and industrialists that with a successful
career managing a business of moderate size would achieve personal
or hereditary nobility.